Mexican Law Enforcement Seizes A Hacked Together Weed Cannon

March 1, 2013 by Mike Szczys 73 Comments

marijuanna-cannon

Here’s an interesting hack. It’s a small pick-up truck with a Dope Cannon attached to it. Sure, it looks more like something you’d see in Syria, but this item was actually seized in Mexico where it was being used to fire 30 pound slugs of Marijuana over the border fence with the US. Usually when you fire artillery there isn’t someone on the target range trying to recover the projectile!

The device uses a PVC barrel to guide the pot-pellet as it’s propelled by compressed air. Hey, swap out the drugs for an energy drink and that sounds pretty familiar. Our qualifying entry for the 2012 Red Bull Creation Contest was an energy drink cannon which used the same setup with a slightly smaller caliber. It makes us wonder if the drug cartel uses little parachutes like we did?

Doesn’t it arouse suspicion to drive something like this around town? You’d think they’d use a box truck or something similar to hide the giant gun.

[Photo Credit: AP via NY Daily News]

[via Reddit]

Revolving Camera Mount Helps To Capture 3D Video-game Assests

March 1, 2013 by Mike Szczys 24 Comments

3d-image-capture

Here’s a camera rig that makes it a snap to produce photorealistic 3D models of an object. It was put together rather inexpensively by an indie game company called Skull Theatre. They published a couple of posts which show off how the rig was built and how it’s used to capture the models.

They’re using 123D, a software suite which is quite popular for digitizing items. The rig has a center table where an object is placed, and a movable jig which holds three different cameras (or one camera for three rotations). You can see the masking tape on the floor which marks the location for each shot. These positions are mapped out in the software so that it has an easy time putting them all together. The shaft which connects the jig to the base is adjustable to accommodate large or small items.

One thing that we found interesting is the team’s technique for dealing with reflections. They use a matte spray to make those surfaces less reflective. This helps 123D do its job but also allows them to map reflective surface more accurately using the game engine.